


A Lifetime Through Cross-Hairs

by nicholas_de_vilance



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Slash, Non-Graphic Violence, Post Reichenbach, Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicholas_de_vilance/pseuds/nicholas_de_vilance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years, five months and six days since Sherlock 'killed himself.'  Five months and four days since Sherlock came home.  I have some adjusting to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a one shot but it's becoming very long for a one shot, so I'll post it in pieces. Hope you like ^_^

I looked at Sherlock more often lately.  Ever since he came back, I’ve noticed my eyes landing on him whenever they wandered.  Sometimes I even forgot that he was real, that he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, like he’d been for so long.  He was different now, hair cut short and dyed blond, face and skin just a bit darker, but he was still definitely Sherlock.  Crass Sherlock, awkward Sherlock, emotionless Sherlock.  However, I’d been seeing other things lately.  And maybe it was just that I was actually looking now days.  I saw reminiscent Sherlock and sad Sherlock, and once, even frightened Sherlock.  He sometimes had nightmares, late at night.  I could hear them from my room and I don’t doubt that even Mrs. Hudson got an earful of the screams on occasion.  I saw these, heard these things, and I wanted to do something about it, but…he was Sherlock.  It wasn’t exactly as if I could just ask him what was wrong or go into his room those particular nights and hold him until his screams died down and his breathing went back to normal.

            I wanted to.

            “What?” Sherlock asked, noticing my watching him from my arm chair.  I barely realized then that he’d stopped playing.

            “Oh…”  The things I wanted to say, I couldn’t conjure.  _Why is the music so gloomy today?  Are you feeling okay?  Why do you have such sad eyes?_   “Nothing…”

            Rolling his eyes, Sherlock propped his instrument back under his chin and plucked the strings as if tuning it.  “Liar,” he accused me, though his voice held no actual complaint.  “You don’t have to worry about me, so much.  I’m fine.  I’ve even been eating like you told me.”

            Could I possibly make him understand that that was one of the things that worried me?  He was more complacent these days.  Of course, he still worked cases, still used his amazing mind as much as he could, but he…did what I told him to more often.  If I told him to eat dinner, he ate it, go to bed, he went, apologize for that insult, he did.  He tended to answer my requests without question.  Except for the shopping.  He still didn’t do that.  In fact, unless a case specifically demanded it of him, he didn’t go outside.  _At all_.

            “Who’s worried?” I said, trying for flippant, but it came out more sarcastic.

            “You can’t fool me, John.  Everything about you right now is almost stereotypical of a wildly concerned person.”  He dragged the bow over the strings, just a low minor chord.  “I’m perfectly fine though, so save your hand-wringing for someone who needs it.  I’m sure you’re most recent lady friend can give you _something_ to fixate on?”

            He was right, of course.  Mary was a bit of an odd one.  It was what attracted me to her in the first place—after I’d basically given up on the entire dating thing.  While Sherlock was still “dead” I hadn’t even wanted to put myself out there, but Mary… I met her at the clinic; she came in with a head cold and a kidney infection, but all she had complained about was that the school wasn’t going to let her go back to work until she stopped falling asleep on her desk.  It was kind of like love at first…prescription.  Well, _like_ at the very least, I liked Mary a lot.

            She took care of herself too, but she did have a tendency to get hurt.  She often blamed it on her being left-handed, because “left-handers are more dangerous, it’s proven.”  I probably should have been concerned for her when she showed up for a date with a cut on her hand or bruises on her arms.  Also, I didn’t _not_ care, I just…my preoccupation with my flatmate had taken up the majority of my thought-space.  I remembered an ex-girlfriend once telling me about how she had to compete with him to be in a relationship with me.  I didn’t disprove that this time.  If anything, I had gotten even worse since he’d “come back to life.”  Mary didn’t seem to mind yet, though.

            “Stop it,” Sherlock snapped, playing up a two-octave scale.

            I was still staring, but I didn’t stop.  In fact, I paid more attention now because Sherlock’s shoulders were tensing; his hands were tight around the violin and bow and he kept his back to me.  I was making him uncomfortable, which was something I hadn’t expected.  Usually he was so good at keeping cool and collected, and that care-free façade stayed pretty firmly in place when he knew I was looking.  Now, he tapped his foot and played a few harsh bars of one of Chopin’s Nocturnes, I think.

            “What?” he demanded, finally.  He didn’t stop playing, but his voice was thin and…maybe anxious.  It was hard to tell because Sherlock was so desperate not to show his emotions.

            “Just wondering,” I said vaguely.  I listened to him decrescendo and retard into something soft and contemporary, apparently satisfied with that response.  I couldn’t help but find it comical that he thought I was done speaking.  “About your nightmares.”

            The music came to an abrupt halt and, even though he’d been playing softly, the silence was deafening.  Sherlock stood stiff and frozen, with the bow still hovering over the strings.  His arm and chin seemed to cradle his violin like a comfort object.  After a long and rather uncomfortable pause, he lowered his bow but didn’t set it down.  The violin came away from his neck but he held it against his stomach.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stated at length.

            “Yes you do.”

            To that, he said nothing.  He gently put his violin in its case, tucked the bow and snapped it shut.  Then, he dropped gracelessly into his armchair.  His hands pressed together, fingers aligned perfectly as he did when he wanted to lose himself deep in thought.  If I pushed him for a response now, he would probably have completely shut down.  Sherlock pulled his legs up, feet on the cushion, and went into one of those zones where he heard, saw, smelled and felt everything that happened around him but he never responded to stimuli.

            I let it go, then.  Instead, I asked him if he wanted some lunch, to which he nodded absently.


	2. Part Two

Triple homicide somehow managed to sound like a drastically over-used cliché when Sherlock said it, giving Lestrade that withering glare of unbridled annoyance.  “It was the gardener,” he insisted.  His voice had that deep, dangerous color making him sound almost genuinely offended that his talents and genius were even called upon for such utter idiocy.  “I’ve looked at five photos and read two statements and I can tell, how is it that you can call yourself a policeman when you cannot even see what is right in front of you?  Look at the second victims’ hands, for Christ’s sake!”

            “Sherlock,” I said, an air of warning that I was quite proud of maintaining.

            He ignored me.  “And how could you possibly miss that stain under the wife’s chin.  It could only be residue from laying fertilizer.  You can’t expect me to believe that a high-class woman like that—god, look at her nails—would spend any amount of her time anywhere near dirt.”

            “Sherlock…”

            “I didn’t come here to be scolded by an over-grown child with an attention-seeking disorder,” Lestrade snapped, messily collecting the file and practically tearing it away from Sherlock.

            “Then why did you come?  Don’t tell me Mycroft has you checking up on me again.”

            “Sherlock…” I pushed myself up from my armchair and took a step toward the two at the sofa.

            “No!  I came because I thought you might be bored, you prick!”  Lestrade was livid now, which was…scary.  As far as I had known him, the detective inspector was typically laid back; he may have been easily frustrated by Sherlock’s antics, but I had never seen him so red-faced angry before.

            “Besides,” he went on, stopping himself just as he’d been about to turn and leave.  “Could you really blame your brother if he had sent me?  After the stunt you pulled?”

            Sherlock clenched his fists, set his shoulders and glared for all he was worth.  “Shut up.”

            “Oh no, you started this.  You want to know why I’m here?  You want to know how I’m asking you to solve a case that I don’t need any help to solve?  You think it might be because I’m still adjusting to the whole idea that you are still here when you’re not supposed to be?”

            “Guys,” I tried, trying not to let it bother me that I was being completely ignored.

            “We all thought you were dead,” Lestrade went on, “Do you have any idea what that did to the people who care about you?  No, of course you don’t because you’re a bloody sociopath, and you couldn’t be bothered that you might be hurting people, just so long as they’re focused on you.”

            “Get out, Lestrade,” Sherlock snapped.  His arms were shaking, that’s how tightly he was clenching his fists.  I could see his knuckles go white.

            “Sherlock,” I tried again.

            “I spent three years coming to grips with the fact that you died, Sherlock,” the DI continued.  The tension in the room was tangible.  “Three years, three bloody years!  And now you’re just back and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with that because I still have those scene photos of your dead body and I can still remember that you weren’t there to help me when I needed.  I was getting past all of that, I was coping and I was learning how to get on without you and now you’re here and I can’t help but wish that you really had just fucking killed yourself and made my life easier!”

            The most terrifying thing about the following silence—even more than the awful thing Lestrade had just said—was the expression on Sherlock’s face.  I couldn’t take my eyes away.  I didn’t really try, I was so used to watching him, but part of me couldn’t bear to see.  All of that irritated tension in his body dropped away and his eyes and mouth went open wide.  The initial shock quickly wore away until I could see the underlying anguish in his eyes.  I could almost hear the white noise as Sherlock’s brain tried to formulate a response to that.  Sherlock Holmes was at a loss for words.  Maybe because he hadn’t expected the conversation to take this turn or because he was on the verge of something and speaking would push him right over that edge.  I marked the creases of his brow and the scrunches at the bridge of his nose with a careful gaze.

            Lestrade had instantly clapped his hand to his mouth when those damned words came out.  It was too late to take that back; he and I were both painfully aware of that.  He didn’t even manage to pull his hand away as he mustered a desperate apology and quickly left.

            I was still watching Sherlock when the front door slammed below us and I caught the tiny sag in Sherlock’s shoulders.  Not for the first time since The Fall, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  I defaulted to watching, waiting for Sherlock to do something, cue me in on where to go next.  I relied on him for that.

            “Sherlock?”

            Abruptly, he picked up his coffee mug and made to take a sip.  His hands were shaking just slightly—so slightly that it’s a wonder I even noticed.  Hesitating, his eyes flicked down and saw the nervous tremor with a rapt sort of fascination.  And then the mug exploded against the sitting room wall, sending shards of ceramic and splashes of hot coffee in all direction.

            “Sherlock!”

            “What!?” he snapped.  The annoyance from earlier returned with at frightening bit of rage in the mix this time.  “What could you possibly say to me?  God, I hold a deep, aching sense of loathing for all of you mewling, tiresome, moronic social cattle.  I want nothing more to do with this nauseating tediousness.”  As he spoke he picked up a shard of shattered mug and clenched it in his hand until I could see blood trickle down his wrist.  Climbing onto the couch he started digging the pointed end of the ceramic into the wallpaper.

            I broke out of my shock and rushed up to him. “Sher-Sherlock!”  I called grabbing hold of him.  “Stop it, what are you doing!?”  He went surprisingly easily; I tore him away from the wall, wrested his hand open shoved him down to the couch.  “What the hell are you doing?”

            “I was drawing,” he said, lying very still.

            “What are you drawing?”  I was yelling, I shouldn’t have been.  The mug shard had blood on it, Sherlock’s blood.  I’ve never been disturbed by the sight of blood—helps that I was a surgeon—but this was Sherlock’s blood and…I could see red-stained concrete, dark locks of hair soaked in a crimson puddle.  I had to drag my eyes away, focus on the wall where Sherlock had begun his art project.  Two lines, one vertical, one horizontal.  The wallpaper was slashed and the plaster below crumbled out of the wound.  “Is that a cross?”

            “Yes,” he replied, sarcastically, “I’ve found Jesus.  John, can I take a moment of your time to tell you about the word of Our Lord?”

            “Well then what is it?”

            He didn’t reply.  I tried waiting him out, tried standing and staring at him, tried being more stubborn than he was, but I’d have to outlive God.  Sherlock Holmes would not budge.  His lips were pressed into a hard line and he was breathing deeply.  If I didn’t know any better, I would think that he was trying his damnedest not to cry. 

            I sighed quietly and knelt beside the couch.  Gently, I pulled his hand away from him and worked his blood soaked fingers open so that I could see his cut.  The skin was broken, but it was shallow.  Luckily, he didn’t need stiches—which were fairly pointless on the hand, to be honest.  I retrieved the first aid kit from the kitchen and set about cleaning the wound gently.  Sherlock didn’t even wince.  He was completely checked out now, glaring at the ceiling as though it had done him personal ill.  There it was again, he was locked within himself again—ever since he’d come back.


End file.
